Within a short space of time he heard her say that she had to leave. A taxi-cab was picking her up at half past three, at the bottom of the drive.
The significance of her words at first failed to penetrate his consciousness. He roused himself. ‘What? But you must stay for tea. The cook has made a cherry cake.’
‘I should love to, but my husband will be waiting for me.’
So saying she picked up her hand-bag, and rose decisively to her feet. Cockerell and Harrison stood up too. ‘A woman’s work is never done,’ Cockerell sententiously remarked.
Harrison struck the right note, however. ‘It has been a great pleasure, Mrs. Bugler,’ he said. ‘I shall send you a list of hotels. The next time we meet, it will be in London town.’
She smiled, thanked him and turned to the old man, but he was not yet ready to say good-bye. He accompanied her to the hall, and when one of the maids brought her coat he took it and held it out. As she turned to push her hand through the second sleeve he caught a drift of perfume.
‘I’ll walk you down,’ he said gruffly.
‘You’ll catch a cold,’ objected Florence, who had also come into the hall.
‘No, no. Do me good.’ To his own ears he sounded like some aged colonel, staggering from his London club. ‘Drowsy in there. Too stuffy. Only take a minute.’
He opened the porch door. The same fog which had been present that morning had returned in dense quantities to smother the closing day; after the heat of the drawing room, the raw, clammy air was like a slap in the face.
The distance from the house to the gate was a short one, too short. Would it had been longer, would it could have stretched to the world’s end! Their footsteps – his, perforce heavier than hers – crunched on the soft gravel, out of time with each other. He walked as slowly as he could past the shrubbery; slower than he needed, if truth be told. The trees dripped. No birds sang. ‘The sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing’ – Keats’s fine lines entered his mind. That was a wintry poem. But Shelley, his hero of old, was more in his thoughts than Keats.
The moment of parting, the moment marked by destiny as the one when he ought to declare himself, was approaching fast. No better moment was ever likely to arrive, and yet he found himself at a loss. What should he say? All? A part? Nothing? Everyone agrees that, in matters of love, ‘faint heart never won fair maiden’, yet he shrank from too rash a declaration. Inbred caution and distrust inhibited him; and he was old, and would soon be gone – be nothing but dust. The long years ahead, the years in which he would play no part save as a memory, stretched before him like a procession of lamps leading into a dark nebulousness.
When the pale bars of the gate loomed he had still not broken his silence. The taxi-cab was parked under the trees by the road’s edge, waiting to carry her away. What if he were to clasp her waist, to kiss her? So would Shelley have done; so might he. But it was all in his head; there was never a possibility that he would do any such thing.
He cleared his throat. ‘Mrs. Hardy would like the pine trees cut down. She feels they make the house too shady.’
‘I like them,’ she said.
‘So do I. They are Austrian pines.’
‘O! In the novel – at Alec d’Urberville’s house – aren’t they Austrian pines?’
‘They are, you are right. It was after I planted them that I began to write Tess’s story.’
‘Then you must not have them cut down,’ she said fiercely. ‘You must not. Not unless you want them cut down.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not. They are fine trees.’
The trees rose above them, their crowns veiled in vapour, their limbs outstretched. All around there was a continual musical pattering as drops of water fell upon the dry leaves.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Thank you. I am so grateful to you.’
She was on the point of leaving; if he failed to speak now, it would be too late. Desperate as a youngster out courting for the first time, he put a hand on the arm of her coat.
‘Gertie.’ He stopped. ‘If, in after-years, anyone should ask you – if anyone should ever ask you if you knew me, you must say, you were my friend.’ And then, unsure as to whether she understood his true meaning, which was more to do with love than friendship, he tried again: ‘If anyone asks, in times to come, what you knew of old Thomas Hardy – you were his friend. Remember that.’
Absorbed into the fog-bound dusk, her expression was too dim to discern in its fullest clarity, but her eyes were enormous. ‘I will,’ she said.
He tightened his grip on her arm. ‘Safe journey,’ and then he let her go.
The car came to life. Fog swirled and poured through the beams of the headlamps.
The old man watched as the lights were swallowed by the darkness of the fog. With some effort, he swung the gate to its latch. As he shuffled back to the house, he was affected by a profound and unaccountable foreboding that his life was drawing to a close, and that he would never see her again.
Harrison left soon after tea, catching the last London train, while Cockerell, who was to stay the night, settled by the fire with a book and almost immediately dozed off, his spectacles hanging from one ear. Wessex snored at his feet, and Florence, also in need of sleep, retired to her bedroom. Sleeping by day was one of her errors; as a result, she often found it impossible to sleep at night.
The old man, wide awake, felt himself strangely at a loss. He was not in the mood to sit at his desk, and although he did open the latest issue of the proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, of which he was an honorary member, he found little in it to stir his interest. As he turned its pages, his mind anxiously pursued Gertie home through the fog. The road to Beaminster was an up-and-down affair, ending with an exceptionally steep descent. When the grandfather clock struck five, he thought: ‘She must be nearly back by now’; when it struck the next half hour, he thought: ‘She will certainly be back by now, unless the fog has been very bad.’
Time ticked on, the fire burnt lower, and his mind turned to the ghost she had mentioned. A long while ago, soon after Emma had died, he had written a poem in which he had visualised her as a ghostly figure calling to him. She had worn – he had written these words – ‘an air-blue gown’. How strange that this lady in Beaminster should likewise wear a blue dress! There could be no significance in such a detail, and yet as soon as Gertie had mentioned it he had made the connection. Emma and Gertie: the two women merged and became one, standing and waiting for him on a station platform, or in some lonely upland spot. The line of thought went no further, for the while.
He prowled the house. Animated chatter came from the kitchen and scullery; about what, he could not tell, and it was beneath him to eavesdrop, though he would have enjoyed doing so. The word ‘eavesdrop’ appealed to him. To ‘eavesdrop’, to stand unnoticed beneath the eaves of a cottage, listening to secrets; such, in a manner of speaking, had been one of the great pleasures of his life.
Shortly before dinner Florence emerged from her bedroom. He was in the hall, tapping the glass of the barometer, when she appeared at the head of the stairs.
‘Thomas,’ she said. ‘Are you aware what date it is?’
He looked interrogatively.
‘It is the twelfth of January.’
There was a pause.
‘It is my birthday, Thomas.’
Her voice shook.
The old man had not been aware that it was her birthday. It was a bad mistake on his part, but he could not be expected to remember everything. Did a birthday really matter so much? Birthdays were for children. Besides, the whole business about the Haymarket had put it clean out of his mind.
She came down the stairs. She stood before him. Her face looked haunted. ‘All you think of is her. I am no one, no one, no one.’
‘Who do you mean? Emma?’
‘Don’t pretend, please. What fool do you take me for? You know perfectly well who I mean.’
‘I have no i
dea.’
‘You know very well. I am not deceived. I am not having this, Thomas.’
‘Get out of my way,’ he said roughly, and pushing past he walked into the drawing room, where Cockerell was blearily rubbing his eyes.
The evening passed in an awkward fashion. He talked to Cockerell, she talked to Cockerell, but not once he did talk to her, or she to him. Soon after supper, she said that she had a headache and returned to her bed.
Clearly he was meant to feel responsible, but why had she waited so long to remind him about her birthday? All day she must have been brooding on his failure to remember. He now comprehended her chilly manner at breakfast, but why had she not said anything then? Why wait? The answer seemed clear: whether consciously or not, she wanted to be able to blame him. It suited her to have him put in the wrong.
Sometimes he felt that there were two Florences, one who helped him and understood him, the other who hindered him greatly and failed to understand him at all. One was this angry, distressed being, preoccupied with her health, patently unhappy; the other was the soft-spoken, sensitive, brown-haired creature with doe-like eyes whom he had met long ago and who, after expressing admiration for his work, had eagerly offered to help in any way she could. (He had craftily invented some historical research for her to carry out on his behalf at the British Museum.) He could picture that woman now; he had not forgotten how absorbing he had found her. She must have been in her mid twenties; about the same age that Gertie was now. He was dimly aware of the existence of a third Florence, which must have had something to do with his burgeoning feelings towards her. In some subtle associative way, it seemed as if the spirit of the Italian city, with its gentle magic, lay within her inner self, or as if she herself was the flower of the city’s soul. Florence was where Civilisation had arguably reached its highest point; it was the city of Dante, who had written the Divine Comedy, in which his spirit had been guided through Hell by Virgil, and through Heaven by Beatrice, his ideal.
However, if he had once thought of Florence as his Beatrice, he no longer did so. Either she had changed, or he had changed, or both of them had changed.
She had changed, certainly. Had he changed? He did not feel he had – not one jot. But, whatever the truth, it was impossible not to feel yet again that there was something terribly amiss with an institution that yoked two individuals for the rest of their lives. Monogamy was not a natural state for the human species, was his considered opinion. Love was a migratory phenomenon, not to be controlled by human laws, any more than a migratory bird might be controlled by borders and customs. Shelley, who had also lived in Florence, and had worshipped Dante, had much to say on this score.
Since Florence was in bed, it fell to him to take Wessex out last thing at night (the maids could not be expected or trusted to do it). While the dog trotted into the cold fog he waited by the porch, holding a lantern. Less than six hours had passed since he had walked Gertie to the hidden gate. Was it impossible, even now, that they should go away together? It was. Shelley would have gone – Shelley, who had eloped not once but twice in his short life, would have kissed her, and sprung into the cab without a thought to the consequences – but Shelley had been young, a free spirit. He was old, too old. The rays of the lantern sparkled but were constrained within a short circle by the fog’s dancing droplets. Would I were young again, he said to himself. Would I were young again.
The morning was colder but clearer than its predecessor, a brisk breeze having dispersed the vaporous air, and Cockerell and Florence walked into the town. The old man settled at his desk. After the troubles of the preceding day he was a little tired, and it disappointed him to find that the poem about Wessex was as bad as ever. Sometimes he would look at a poem that he had put aside, having thought it useless, and discover that it was in fact a good piece of work. This poem still lacked something; it did not entirely believe in itself. If he could have brought it into a satisfactory condition he would have given it to Florence, and thus, in some measure, atoned for his failure to remember her birthday. Her coldness of manner at breakfast made it clear that he was still being punished on that score.
The time was not entirely wasted, for he wrote a letter to Harrison, in which he said how much he was looking forward to the production at the Haymarket. He took it to the post-box, which was set in the outside of the wall by the gate. As he posted the letter he became aware of a small showering of vegetable fragments, and looked up to see a squirrel which, having ventured from its winter refuge, was nibbling on a pine cone held in its paws.
In the afternoon he went for a stroll with Cockerell. The sun, though not visible, betrayed its presence by a certain watery brightening in the sky’s southern quarter.
‘Is it true, that when you were born, you were cast aside for dead?’
‘So I was always told. There was some impediment in my breathing.’
‘Who saved you?’
‘The nurse, apparently. Whether “cast aside” is exactly the right phrase, I am not sure. There was some discussion as to whether the vicar should be sent for.’
‘So you could be baptised?’
‘Yes.’
Cockerell was interested at this and asked him whether it had inspired a scene in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, in which Tess gives birth to a baby which dies before it can be baptised properly by a priest, and is therefore denied a proper Christian burial.
‘Perhaps.’
The track on which they were walking was one that led south of the house, passing a field which some years earlier had been converted to allotments for townsfolk. On such a wintry day no one was at work, which relieved him; he had no wish to meet anyone. When these allotments had been originally proposed, fears were voiced that the horticultural produce would be stolen by gipsies or children, but the only thieves had been rabbits and birds, both attracted in great numbers by the cabbages and cauliflowers. Shooting kept the numbers down, and in an attempt to discourage the birds, three scarecrows, composed of sacking, rags, sticks and the remnants of old clothes, and tied together with string, now stood among the vegetables like some modern version of the Crucifixion. The birds were far too intelligent to be deceived, however. Several pigeons, even now, were waddling among the cabbages.
Whether Cockerell noticed the scarecrows was not apparent. He was one of those men for whom a walk is a conversation on legs, and he tended to keep his eyes firmly fixed on the ground.
‘But you had a regular nurse?’ he inquired.
‘She was the local woman who helped with births. That is the story, at least.’
‘A very good story, too. I hope you have put it in your biography.’
‘I expect so, yes; Florence will know. I expect it’s there,’ he said, affecting a certain vagueness, for while he knew very well it was there he liked to pretend that he was entirely ignorant of the content of his biography, or even of its existence.
The notion that he should write his biography had, in fact, come from Cockerell, years earlier. At first the old man had been unconvinced. He did not like biographies, and as a private person saw no reason why anyone should take any interest in what had been, when all was said and done, a fairly dull sort of life, largely spent seated at a desk. Cockerell argued the opposing case: that people were always intrigued by the lives of famous men, and that if he did not write it, someone else would, a journalist, a hack, who would no doubt include many inaccuracies and inventions that would then become established as truths. It was, he suggested, a matter of ownership. Whose life was it?
He had not been persuaded; not for a long while. But Cockerell was a persuasive chap with a great deal of tenacity, and he had eventually been won over to the principle of the scheme. The practical work involved – the collation of material, the checking of dates and deciphering of notes, not to mention the transcription of trunk-loads of yellowing letters – had been far too onerous for him to undertake, but he had kindly delegated it to Florence, in order to give her something to occupy her
time and to distract her from herself. Over a number of years she had worked on the biography, writing loose chapter drafts which he had then written in his own style, incorporating anecdotes as he thought appropriate and deleting material that seemed irrelevant.
It did not please him, particularly. Fiction had been a generous mistress, allowing him to shape and adapt and invent as he thought fit; a biography, in contrast, was a tyrant master, obliging him to stay much closer to the truth in such matters as time and place. Of course, he was able to deviate here and there, and it had helped him to use the third person, as if the biography had been written by Florence, but the result lacked tension and coherence. Truth does not have the tightly ordered quality of art. Still, there it was; after his death, people could make of it whatever they liked.
‘The early history of great artists is always interesting,’ Cockerell observed. ‘So many seem to have had difficult childhoods, in one way or another. One often begins to feel that, from an artistic point of view, it is important not to have been too happy, in a way. Or is it rather that those of an artistic temperament seek out and explore the difficulties, which other men ignore?’
He considered this remark. ‘Mine was not altogether a difficult childhood,’ he said, ‘or not especially so, given what some people have to endure. I was not unhappy. I had loving parents. My mother, especially, was a very fine woman.’ He considered further. ‘On the other hand, perhaps it is in the nature of things that childhood should be difficult.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘The world does not seem designed for the well-being of the human race. Or designed at all, unfortunately. If there were a designer, he would appear to have been entirely indifferent to the happiness of humankind.’
Cockerell, a confirmed atheist who felt that organised religion did more harm than good, did not dissent from this view.
‘Where were you baptised, in the end?’
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